↵* Present address: Department of Biological Sciences, New York City College of Technology, City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA, and Arthritis and Tissue Degeneration Program and David Z. Rosensweig Genomics Research Center, Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, NY 10021, USA.

A few years ago, Jihye Yun, then a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, found that colon cancer cells whose growth is driven by mutations in the gene KRAS or a less commonly mutated gene,BRAF, make unusually large amounts of a protein that transports glucose across the cell membrane. The transporter, GLUT1, supplies the cells with the high levels of glucose they need to survive. GLUT1 also transports the oxidized form of vitamin C, dehydroascorbic acid (DHA), into the cell, bad news for cancer cells, because Yun found that DHA can deplete a cell’s supply of a chemical that sops up free radicals. Because free radicals can harm a cell in various ways, the finding suggested “a vulnerability” if the cells were flooded with DHA, says Lewis Cantley at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, where Yun is now a postdoc.

Cantley’s lab and collaborators found that large doses of vitamin C did indeed kill cultured colon cancer cells with BRAF or KRAS mutations by raising free radical levels, which in turn inactivate an enzyme needed to metabolize glucose, depriving the cells of energy. Then they gave daily high dose injections—equivalent to a person eating 300 oranges—to mice engineered to develop KRAS-driven colon tumors. The mice developed fewer and smaller colon tumors compared with control mice.